Once Upon A Time
by The Lucky Kind
Summary: The one where she's too broken and he's too confused. And they dicuss the topic of fairytale endings and happily ever afters. One shot.


**I know. I know. I'm supposed to be updating my other stories, but my brain was all over the place today and this popped into my head. I'm working on my other stuff but I seriously cannot help what goes on in the giant abyss I call my brain. This started off as a drabble then it sorta spiralled out of control from there. I hope you like it, nonetheless.**

**I don't own Austin and Ally. (Who else saw the promo for Girlfriends & Girl friends? FANGIRLING!)**

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He knew this was coming. He knows, before he even picks up the phone, who would be calling him at three in the morning. He knew from the moment she met Dallas that this would be the result. That the cell-phone accessory cart guy with overexaggerated hair would leave her broken and he would have to be the one picking up the pieces. He would have to pick up the pieces of something that was once so bright, so radiant, so beautiful before it was tainted by someone so undeserving.

Dallas never deserved her. He was absolutely positive about this.

This is why it doesn't surprise him that she was the one calling him. It doesn't surprise him that she only managed to mutter one sentence through her choked sobs. It doesn't even surprise him when he jumps out of bed and scrambles to grab his disarray clothes from the floor. He was not at all surprised to find himself standing outside of her house at three in the morning. He probably should have said no just to prove a point. Just to make her see what he had known from the very beginning. But he knows it was impossible to say no to her. He couldn't say no to anything she asked because it would kill him if he said no, even just once, and she never asked him for anything again. He likes being the one she depends on. He likes being the one she told all her secrets to, even if none of her secrets were about him.

He can't even describe how much he wants to be the guy she swooned to Trish about, or the guy she mowed lawns for. Just once he wants to be the boy she stares at without blinking, and the one she gets all nervous and flustered around. Just once he wants to be the boy she writes about in her sacred book, the name that was scribbled with hearts in the margins, and the inspiration to her love songs.

Just once.

All he needed was one time to prove to her that all guys weren't the same. He didn't need second chances because he knew he certainly wouldn't be like her past boyfriends. He would get it right the first time. He knew he would never gain the courage to say these words to her. So the best he could do is watch as she gave all these undeserving boys second chances and he would be there to put her back together after those second, third, and forth chances were all broken. They would all get their unworthy second chances as he sat there on the sidelines patiently waiting for his first.

He doesn't mind waiting. Not for Ally. Never for Ally.

He doesn't knock on the door. He knows she's already on the other side, leaning against the wall, waiting for him to come. He lifts up the mailbox flap, softly calling her name through it, careful not to wake Mr. Dawson. The door swings open almost immediately. Ally stands there, with puffy eyes and a trembling lip. She is dressed in sweats and her face is damp from tears. She still manages to look beautiful.

"Austin." Her voice sounding like a hoarse whisper. He walks up to her, wrapping both arms around her small frame. She grips the sides of his sweater tightly in her small balled up fists. He lets her cry into his shirt. Neither of them seems to care that they were standing in the hallway with the front door left wide open. After the chills from the wind sweeps through the house, he finally decides to lift her up and carry her to her bedroom, closing the front door behind him with his foot.

They sit in silence, on her bed, watching each other. Ally leans agianst the pillows and he sits at the foot of the bed. He is now stripped down to his pajamas as he watches her, waiting for her to make the first move

"I didn't get my happily ever after," she finally says.

"Good. He didn't deserve to get yours anyway."

She sighs, dropping her head into her palms. She's not crying, but a dry muffled sob still slips out of her mouth. He doesn't think she has any tears left; too many wasted on boys who didn't deserve them.

"I wanted a happily ever after," she says, her voice still sounding like the ghost of her former self.

"Don't," he replies, crawling across the bed to sit beside her. "They're overrated anyway."

"You don't believe in happily ever afters?" she asks, her snivels coming to a halt as she looks up at him with curiosity in her eyes.

He shakes his head. "Nope. They're really silly."

"They're romantic," she argues back.

"It's too embellished. Movies and book blow it up into this big extravagent scene, when in reality, it just isn't," he explains, unconsciously scooting closer to her in the process.

"I still want a one," she pouts, unknowingly leaning closer to him.

One arm swiftly drapes around her shoulders. "If you want one so badly, maybe you should stop dating so many princes," he suggests.

She looks over at him, her eyebrows pulled together in confusion. "But the prince always ends up with the princess and they share a happily ever after."

"Exactly. You are so much more than a princess. You have a right to get something so much better than a prince. Princesses are used to people taking care of things for them and when they meet their prince, the prince takes care of the princess for the rest of their lives. In the end, it's the princesses job to look pretty as the prince provides for her. You, Ally, don't need to be taken care of. You are so independent and strong. The princess never gets a say in anything, but you have a voice. A brilliant voice that is worthy of being heard. You can be so much greater than a princess that lets the prince do everything for her," he breaks down for her. She nods her head, blushing slightly from the quick compliments.

"So if I'm not a princess, what am I?"

"You're Ally," he states as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. And to him it was.

She smiles up at him, the first real smile he's seen on her face in a long time. Somehow, with that one smile, he knows that everything will be okay. He knows that it doesn't matter if Ally dates a hundred boys after Dallas. It doesn't matter if she gives each of them a thousand second chances. Because he knows that everything eventually comes back to him. No matter how many boys she dates, he will always be that one boy in her life who will never hurt her. That one boy who will never make her cry. That one boy that picks up all of the broken pieces and puts them back together. Although the pieces will never fit together in the same way again, they will always still look the same amount of beautiful, but with so much more strength.

"Thanks for coming over," she smiles, snuggling closer to him.

He shrugs, "thanks for calling."

"I couldn't sleep," Ally admits.

He smiles, knowing where this conversation was headed. "Do you want a bedtime story?" She nods her head against his arm, looking up at him with wide slightly puffy doe eyes. He untangles himself from her and watches as she gets comfortable, pulling the blanket up to her chin and snuggling deeper into the mattress.

He watches her and the way the thin blade of moonlight cuts across the room from the cracked window. It dances across her face, enhancing her already magical features. He trails his eyes across her face, all the way from the wrinkles on her forehead to the curve of her bottom lip. He traces them with his eyes, going over the features he already had trapped permanently in his memory.

"Once upon a time," he begins, because that's how you're supposed to begin a story. He sighs searching his brain for something to lead the story somewhere. He looks at the girl laying in front of him. Her eyes are drooping and her lips are curved upwards in a small smile. He smiles just watching her and suddenly, he can't wait anymore. He can't wait for the next guy to come along and sweep her off her feet. He can't wait for the next prince to come by and give her promises of a happily ever after, to only shatter it in a couple of weeks. He's tired of waiting, when her knows for a fact that he will never hurt her. He doesn't want to wait because Ally deserves to be fought for. She deserves a fairytale where everything falls into place and he knows he can give it to her.

He wants to give it to her.

He turns around so he is facing the wall instead of her face. He knows that he won't be able to look at her while he is telling this story.

"Once upon a time," he begins again, "a boy met a girl, and her smile was so hauntingly captivating, it practically drew him to her. They played games and shared secrets with an innocence so pure it tore away any ounce of hatred left in the world. They whispered promises in a language only they knew and told stories in a way only they could."

He thought back to their childhood. The one when they were only six years old and they already knew that had this unbreakable bond. A childhood so innocent, that they didn't need any labels. They didn't know about love or heartbreak. All they knew was that they couldn't live without each other and they didn't want to.

"He was always able to figure her out. Every action and part of her told a story that he read like an open book," he continued. "Her eyes, however, told a thousand stories all at once. Whenever he looked in them, her saw every side to her, but he never knew which one was real. Her eyes were this impossible riddle that left him weak every time. When they grew up, a lot of things changed. She wasn't just his girl anymore. Because other guys started to see what he had seen since the very beginning. She was beautiful to them, but she had always been beautiful to him."

He felt the bed shift and he knew that she was sitting up now. She was watching him, her eyes staring wide eyed at the back of his head. He knows she is probably chewing her hair, a large lock of her caramel locks lodged between her teeth. She does this because she had figured out where this story was going. He has made it pretty obvious. He only hopes she would let him finish it.

"Because she was so beautiful, she was also broken a lot of times. Way too many times for a girl as amazing as her should ever be broken. Although many things had changed since the boy and the girl were young, a couple things never changed. They still shared secrets in their own language and her smile was still captivating. And her eyes were still an impossible enigma that the boy could not figure out. This girl was like air to the boy. He couldn't live without her. He couldn't stand to see her get hurt so many times."

The bed shifts again and this time, he knows she is sitting directly behind him. She doesn't speak, only watches him intently, patiently waiting for him to get to the big dramatic ending. He takes a deep breath, preparing himself to admit the one secret he has worked so hard to keep locked away. He exhales and he can practically feel her do the same.

"Once upon a time, a boy fell in love with a girl and her eyes were a mystery he wanted to spend his entire life solving."

He finishes and the room lasps into a tense silence. No one moves, no one speaks, he even forgets to breathe for a few seconds. The bed shifts again and he can feel her hot breath on his neck. Her hand reaches over and places itself on his shoulder. He looks down at it and he forgets how to breathe again. She pulls on his shoulder, softly guiding his body towards hers. With a sharp intake of breath, he turns around, meeting those mysterious eyes once again. He has never wanted to be able to read her eyes more than he did at that moment. He searches her for a sign, something to prove that she feels the same.

He finds nothing.

Her hand drops from his shoulder. They continue to stare at each other and he doesn't know what to do. They both know that he has already said everything he could. He put himself out there and now it is up to her to decide where they go from here.

The ball's in her court.

"No happily ever after?" she refers to the story as she breaks the silence.

He shakes his head, unfazed by her choice of words. He had known her way to long to be surprised by anything she does. "Happily ever afters mean that the story is coming to an end. And I never ever want our story to end. I want us to begin. I want to be your final once upon a time."

She looks at him for a brief moment until her lips curve into a smile. He sees her smiles and lets out a breath he didn't know he had been holding in. She leans over, not too much since there was hardly any space between them to begin with, and gently pressses her lips against his. It isn't rushed and it isn't heated. It in't one of those kisses where the couple attacks each other and cling to onto one another. It is soft and careful. It's just enough to prove to the both of them that whatever they have is real.

And she knows he is right. She knows that she doesn't need a happily ever after. She never needed that handsome prince to proclaim his love for her and take care of her for the rest of their lives. She doesn't need that fairytale ending she had convinced herself she wanted since she was a kid. All she really wants is a fairytale that never ends. A fairytale that stretches out across time and breaks anybodys doubts of young love.

All she needs is a knight in dark blue ripped jeans and one last once upon a time with him.

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**This is a little different from the stuff I normally write. I'm not sure what to think about this. I was so hesistant about pushing the button that said create new story but I did it. Please let me know what you think because I'm not too sure about this one. Please don't hate me for not updating my other stuff. I'm doing everything as soon as I can. The challenge will be posted soon! I know you guys have been waiting for that one. :)**

**Thanks for reading! Review so I know this doesn't completely suck?**

**xoxo :)**


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